Longing to Be-long

Hafiz, the Sufi poet, says:

Don't surrender your loneliness
So quickly
Let it cut more deep.

Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice
So tender,

My need of God
Absolutely
Clear.


I turn on the television as soon as I get home. Sounds of CSI preferable to the silence (I think). My companions on sitcoms, who share a nightly meal with me, more real than the passing of lives in my day (I think). I lent a book to a friend, tagged with my impressions; she returns it, marked with hers. I relish the vague moment of intimacy with her that I never get to have as our lives rush by each other. I see myself standing on a suburban sidewalk at dusk, gazing in windows at families preparing dinner, snuggling around the blue light of the television, and I long to belong (I think). "Something missing in my heart tonight."

My need (I think) is for human intimacy. I think I want a child, a partner, and intentional community, and I will feel full again. Yet, I have blood family, I have extended family, I have good and faithful friends, and I know that one person, one community alone cannot season me to wholeness, to doneness. And yet the sense of exile has been with me all my life. Recently, I've begun to recognize that the exile is self-imposed. What I am learning (I think) is that we belong because we were born...Justification by Grace. AND belonging is be-longing; be in the longing, the cutting loneliness that draws us, drives us into connection and community and intimacy that is our call to living.

And, do I think too much?